When Desire Wanes, One Waxes
by katrinawritesstuff
Summary: Effie has a special surprise for Haymitch on the evening of their fifth anniversary. Things do not go as planned. Post-Mockingjay.
1. Chapter 1

_Haymitch is going to __**love**__ this,_ Effie thought wickedly.

She set down the twin plates of Spaghetti Bolognese on the chequered tablecloth, lit the three wicks on the ornate candelabra. Fetched a bottle of champagne and some tall glasses. Laid out the silverware on top of the crisp white napkins, then scattered some lilac petals insouciantly across the table in the manner of a five-year-old decorating fairy-bread (lilacs were the romantic flower of choice these days. No-one could stand the sight of roses after President Snow's reign; his blood-and-flora fetish had brought indelible disrepute to the once-grand _Rosaceae_ name). Once she was satisfied with the romantic ambience she had created, Effie took a seat at one of the table's wooden chairs and began to plot her seduction.

It was the fifth-year anniversary of their cohabitation, and Effie had planned an extra special treat for this one. The problem was trying to determine the manner in which to reveal said treat to Haymitch.

This treat had come courtesy of a beauty salon in the Capitol, which was called, somewhat misleadingly, "Waxwork Wonders." The salon was a high-end one that specialised in all manner of pubic hair stylings, from the fairly prosaic (your standard small triangles, crescent moons, diamonds that recalled softball fields) to the more adventurous (hearts, stars, menorahs, a ribbon that spelled out your partner's name in henna held aloft by a pair of turtledoves...oh, the mutitudinous ways to prettify one's pudenda!) The salon, like virtually every other upscale enterprise in the Capitol, was an opulent establishment whose decadent treasures belied the consummate tackiness of its decor—overall, the impression it gave was one of a trailer-trash woman who'd recently won the lottery and wore a flapper dress everywhere to prove that she was now a high-society lady. Indeed, everything in Waxwork Wonders was so incredibly _gaudy,_ its interiors as pink as its clients' undercarriages after they'd availed themselves of its services.

Effie had booked into the salon at four o'clock on a Friday, exactly one hour after she'd finished work. Saturday night was their anniversary dinner, which meant that Effie had had to keep her body concealed throughout Friday evening and all day Saturday—a depressingly easy feat. At the beginning of their courtship, Haymitch had been like a wild animal, always pawing at her even through Public's restrictive confines, and ravaging her in Private where his primitive impulses were given free reign ("domestic sphere" seemed like such a misnomer; during those early years, never had Effie seen Haymitch less domesticated than when the two of them were alone together). These days, though, the beast's passionate fire had been well and truly extinguished by the brown liquid menace, which not only made Haymitch more cagey and argumentative, but also had the unfortunate side-effect of brewer's droop*, which put quite a downer (so to speak) on their erotic shenanigans. In the last year or so, Effie'd had to concede that she and Haymitch were less like a lusty Beauty and her masculine Beast than a sour-puss spinster and her senile canine, one who barked stupidly without provocation or cessation and periodically pissed all over the rug. A pity she couldn't rub his nose in it. The wax was her last-ditch effort to reclaim any semblance of this animalism, of their once-dynamic-now-dull sex life.

As Effie had sat in the waiting area, perched apprehensively on the edge of the heart-shaped velvet cushion in one of salon's pink wicker chairs, she couldn't help but notice that the other customers were all much younger than she was: Twenty-somethings wanting to wear their thong bikinis to the beach sans the embarrassment of any curly black protrusions; thirty-somethings getting their lady-parts landscaped so their beleaguered husbands could associate the region with sex again, and not its bloody aftermath in the form of childbirth. At nearly fifty years old, Effie Trinket was easily the oldest woman in the salon. And yet, she was less bothered by the youth of these women than the missed opportunities their youth reminded her of: Throughout most of her twenties, Effie had worked non-stop as a personal assistant to the Gamemakers, and spent most of her thirties grieving the loss of her husband (a government minister killed on an official visit to District Twelve by a crazed resident). Aside from a glorious 5-year period of frenzied love-making from ages 27 to 32 (when her late husband had still been alive), followed by a brief period of promiscuity in the two years immediately after his death, sex had featured very little in the life of Effie Trinket. In fact, for the most part, the very act of 'preparing' for sex—of buying a naughty teddy or some sexy French lingerie, of signing up for Tantric yoga or erotic pole-dancing classes—had always seemed like something that only _other_ women were allowed to do. Effie hated to admit it, but she probably _was_ A Good Little Capitol Girl after all, despite Mr. Abernathy's X-rated imaginings to the contrary. She wished she'd been more sexually adventurous as a young woman, regretted all the time she'd spent working under one tyrant when she could've been naked under many. But then, _other_ young women didn't have to watch their husbands get brutally killed—she didn't see how she could've behaved any differently.

It was sad, really. There were all these little unseized moments, all these wasted opportunities that died inconsequential deaths on the altar of our refusals, and we rarely bothered to give even the slightest thought to their passing. As Effie looked around her at the young women in the salon—some accompanied by their mothers, some having a good old laugh with their girlfriends—she felt a sharp pang of regret in her chest. She mourned these wasted moments now, and in doing so, was able to give them a proper burial—deep in the recesses of her mind, where the various losses of her tragically-circumscribed young life could finally be put to rest.

"Effie Trinket?"

Effie jumped. The woman who'd suddenly materialised before her smelled heavily of a perfume whose exact scent Effie couldn't place. She was dressed in a gorgeous red cocktail dress patterned with tiny white hearts. The loveliness of the outfit was in stark contrast to the grotesque deformity of its wearer: the woman's face appeared to be tattooed to resemble a tiger, covered in a series of curved black and orange stripes. She had whisker implants, three per cheek, and piercing yellow eyes whose unnatural upward curve called to mind a pair of devil horns. Both of these eyes were trained squarely on Effie now, pinning her in place like a dead dry butterfly.

"Uh...ye-yes, that's me, Effie, I'm Effie. Effie Trinket," she stuttered, climbing nervously to her feet and extending a trembling hand so that this strange woman might shake it. When the woman immediately seized her hand, in a movement so swift and animal-like Effie'd had to stop herself from recoiling, she couldn't help but blanch when she saw the woman's fingernails—four inches long and each sharpened to a deadly point. Like claws.

The woman gave her hand a vigorous shake before diffidently releasing it and shooting her what was probably a friendly—but looked vaguely menacing, on her—smile.

"Tigris," she introduced herself coolly, her Cheshire smile widening. "Right this way, Ms. Trinket."

Effie followed Tigris down the hall and into a room that she was relieved to see was not, in fact, all pink. In fact, it was rather lovely: The room had dim lighting and a gently comforting ambience. Chinese lanterns floated just below the ceiling, stringless and seemingly suspended in mid-air. Effie marvelled at their defiance of gravity. Through the subtle glow, Effie could see that the walls had been painted to resemble traditional Chinese landscape paintings, their tiny human specks barely visible against the sprawling grandeur of the mountainous backdrop. These paintings made your eyes play hopscotch, leaping from one spot to another and then back again with merry abandon, because there was no central focal point. Each fine brushstroke seemed to modestly beckon your eye for its momentary appreciation. How different from Western Renaissance art, based solely on a single individual's perspective, with the distance vanishing away from one lone vantage point. Paintings such as these were multi-focal, based on many points of view. What an interesting way of looking at the world. Accepting rather than rigid. Fluid rather than fixed. Self-effacing, not strident. And what a stark contrast with the gaudy pink waiting area and the outside of the salon, whose over-bearing brashness could basically function as a signifier for the average Panemian (or "American" in the old language) herself! Effie had been a typical Panemian, once: one-sided, self-righteous. Always convinced she knew what was best for everyone else. She was still like that, in some ways. Still bossy, still carping. And yet: Her husband's death had introduced various shades of grey to her monochromatic colour scheme.

Effie was starting to wonder if her thoughts about Western and Eastern art representing each culture's essential character was a kind of racism, when Tigris's voice startled her.

"Remove your lower garments please, Miss."

Being a Good Capitol Girl, Effie did as she was told, shimmying out of her pink pencil skirt, folding it into a neat square and primly setting it down on one of the side benches. When she got to her knickers, she hesitated, blushing. Was she really going to expose her wherewithal to this woman? Tigris, who'd been busy over in a corner heating up the wax, suddenly glanced over her shoulder and their eyes locked.

"Yes, you'll need to get out of your panties, too. Don't worry"—she nodded her head at the white sheet lying on the bed in the centre of the room—"when you climb up on that, you can use the sheet for modesty." Another Cheshire grin. The ghastly woman seemed to be relishing Effie's discomfort.

Effie got up onto the bed, pulled the sheet up to her waist, then slipped her arms under it, grabbed the sides of her knickers, tugged down and wiggled. When she got them down to her ankles, she simply let them fall to floor, still blushing furiously. Then Tigris came over with the wax, a small wooden panel and some cloth strips. Effie had the sheet entirely covering her body, all the way down to her ankles. Tigris looked at her expectantly, silently intimating that she'd like her to hike it up so she could commence her work. When Effie just gave her a slightly-frightened smile, Tigris sighed and yanked it up for her.

The sudden exposure was a shock to her system, a violation. It was so oddly _intimate_—entrusting your genitals to a stranger who wasn't your lover or your GP. Feeling a strong sense of her innate Capitol propriety—_prudery,_ some would call it—Effie tried to dispel her embarrassment (and, let's face it, extreme nervousness) by making small-talk with this awful woman.

"So, uh...on the scale of one to ten—'one' being squeezing a zit and 'ten' being childbirth—how painful is this, uh, _procedure_ going to be, would you say?"

Tigris laughed. "It's not so terrible. I am not going to lie, it _will_ hurt—this _is_ your first time, Miss—so, I would say about a seven, maybe? But nowhere near as painful as childbirth."

"_You_ have children?" Effie could barely conceal her shock. This creature-woman was a mother? Someone had procreated with her? Still, she supposed the woman had probably looked normal once. Or maybe she'd hooked up with Birdman and they'd had a baby bat.

"Oh, yes." Tigris gave another laugh. It was a horrible laugh; a kind of hiss-wheeze. "I have one daughter. She works here at this salon. Good way to earn herself some pocket money, huh? She'll be turning eighteen soon."

_Eighteen,_ Effie thought bitterly. Her stomach twisted. The same age her daughter would've been if...if...

"What shape would you like your Aphrodite's Garden made into, Miss?" Tigris asked suddenly, cutting off her thoughts. She handed Effie a catalogue. "We have quite a selection for you to choose from."

Did they ever! Effie's eyes roamed the catalogue in bewilderment: shooting stars, bouquets, bows and arrows. Secular stylings and religious ones. Crescent moons with stars for Islamic lovers, the Star of David for Semitic sweeties (religion had made a comeback in the post-Mockingjay Rebellion period. Whether it was a welcome comeback or not was a matter of perspective). The Bohr Model and the Red 'A' for the proudly godless. Effie had no idea twat hair could be scultped in so many different ways!

"Um, nothing fancy. I'll just have it all off, thanks." Haymitch was a man of extremes—he would go wild over either a full bush or no grass on the pitch whatsoever. Anything in between—especially anything unusual—wasn't likely to get his meter quaking.

"As you wish." Said with a faint whiff of derision, Effie thought.

Tigris dipped the panel in some wax and carefully spread some over the delicate area. Effie winced at the heat of the wax on her privates. Tigris then applied one of the cloth strips, giving it a firm but gentle pat down. She made small-talk with Effie as she worked.

"Naughty surprise for your husband then, hmm?"

"Erm..." Effie didn't quite know how to categorise her relationship with Haymitch. 'Boyfriend' sounded too informal, like they were just high-school sweethearts. 'Partner' sounded far too formal, like their relationship was strictly a business one. And 'lover', despite its exotic romanticism or nice gender-neutrality, conjured illicit associations of an affair, the cost of cheap motel rooms put on the tab of spousal ignorance. Being the Good Capitol Girl that she was, though, Effie settled on the conservative choice.

"Partner, actually. This is my gift to him for our fifth-year anniversary. Ow! Sugar! Preceded by a nice romantic dinner to whet his appetite, of course."

"A romantic dinner? Oh, how lovely. Which restaurant will you be dining at?"

"Um, it'll be home-cooked. OUCH! _Fudgesicles!"_

"Oh, home-cooked? How...quaint."

Effie bristled at the condescension in Tigris's last remark. _Well, we don't all go out hunting for our food,_ she thought bitchily, wishing she had the temerity to say this aloud. Of course, she'd do no such thing—it was most unwise to piss off someone who was waxing your privates, especially if that someone had claws.

"It may be quaint, but 'quaint' works for us," Effie replied coolly. Then, smiling wickedly, added, "Besides, the activity that inevitably follows will be anything _but_ quaint."

Tigris shot her a sly look and laughed.

"So, five years. When do you think he'll propose marriage then, hmm?"

The question was an unwelcome one; even cruel. Effie had wanted to marry Haymitch badly, but Haymitch was, in his cynicism, dead against the idea. Marriage was, "A gold ring noose that strangles a man's spirit dead," in his own words. After a time, Effie had to just satisfy herself with the knowledge that at the end of the day, she Haymitch were a couple, even if they weren't legally binded. It didn't matter really, she supposed. They were binded in other ways. In the end, marriage was just another idea she had to let go of, like motherhood before it. Over the years, Effie had become a skilled practitioner of The Art of Letting Go, and all its associated disciplines: She had long ago mastered Repression, and was practically a Zen Master Of Childish Emotions. But still, there remained one or two disciplines at which she was still merely a novice. Nostalgia, for example, tripped her up every time.

"Oh, Haymitch isn't really the marrying type," Effie said, suppressing a sigh. "We're happy leaving the relationship as is. We've no need for official recognition. Ow! Contamination!"

Tigris's sceptically raised eyebrow climbed a rung higher. "You're both happy with things as they are, or... just he is?"

_What was this vile woman insinuating?_ Effie took a deep breath, tried not to let the sudden flash of anger she felt show on her face. This woman had no business interfering with their relationship, none at all! _Imagine:_ Intimating that the lack of a marriage proposal had been a source of friction between them, or that Effie was more infatuated with Haymitch than vice versa. The nerve!

When Effie didn't respond, Tigris continued her assessment. "When a man doesn't propose to a woman after a certain time," she said, smearing on a thick coat of wax, "it sometimes indicates a touch of, ah, _reluctance_ on his part, a lack of commitment. You have to stand back from the situation and wonder, 'What is the cause of this reluctance? What's the underlying issue here?'"

"There's no underly—aaah!—_underlying issue_ anywhere. We're happy just as we are, thanks." Said a touch too stiffly, Effie knew, but Tigris was really beginning to irritate her.

"A ring will bind your union legally. It will cement your relationship in a way that mere roses and chocolates never could." _Rip._

"OW! Ohhh..." Effie's outrage at this statement had to compete with the fact that Tigris had just done the tender part of one of her lips. _Not to worry, had no use for that bloody labia anyway._ Good Zeus, this was awful. She bit her lower lip hard and squeezed her eyes shut tightly for a few seconds until the pain subsided.

"Do _you_ have a husband?" Posing this question made Effie feel triumphant. Surely, no-one would want to marry HER...

"I do! My husband, he is a military man, a former peacekeeper. He's a rugged, handsome man. Big. Strong."

Effie felt a sharp pang. _She'd_ had a big, strong husband once. No more. She wanted to hit Tigris; if she had a set of claws she'd tear the feline freak's eyeballs right of out of their sockets.

Instead, Effie drew a deep breath. She would not, she resolved, let this horrid woman see her get upset. She would stifle her anger and her hurt just like she stifled the profanities on the pain of the wax.

"How nice for you," she said in her clipped Capitol accent. "But we just don't think it's worth the risk. You know, what with the divorce rates and all."

Tigris ripped off a strip on a particularly sensitive region. The pain was blinding.

"YEEEEOOOOW! Motherfucking son of a bitch-faced _cunt!"_

"Love is always worth the risk. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, after all." She smiled at Effie. "That'll be $30."

* * *

Waiting for Haymitch to come home that Saturday and receive his special anniversary treat, Effie could feel herself begin to grow increasingly anxious.

_It's seven-thirty. Haymitch usually knocks off work at six-thirty and gets home at seven. Where the hell IS he?_

The table was all set, the steam from the Spaghetti Bolognese quickly evaporating into nothing. The clock's ticks sounded like thunder in the silent apartment.

_Oh, Haymitch. Hurry up and come home. Your delicious treat is getting cold._ Effie sighed. The spaghetti was starting to cool off a bit, too.


	2. Chapter 2

_Where Haymitch was at six-thirty:_

Having completely forgotten his anniversary, after work Haymitch Abernathy went to visit his old friend, Peeta Mellark. After the Mockingjay Rebellion, Peeta and Haymitch both worked in construction. They'd been friends for some twelve years; in fact, the thirty-two-year-old was one of the few friends Haymitch had. Their friendship, like that of most adult men, was jovial yet superficial, with booze and sports trivia serving as useful proxies for intimacy. Peeta and Haymitch often drank together at Poseidon's (their local bar, where the Seam had once been) or, when the Mellark kid hadn't been so woefully whipped by his increasingly uptight missus, occasionally frequented the local strip club to appraise the new talent. Now that he was a married father of two, Peeta seemed to have lost interest in strippers, claiming—somewhat fuddy-duddily, Haymitch thought—that the only breasts he needed to ogle were his wife's. Peeta had also claimed that since Katniss had begun breast-feeding Theo (their younger child, now eight months) he couldn't look at _any_ woman's tits without being reminded of dried-milk-encrusted nipples and Katniss's constant complaints of mastitis. Haymitch thought it would be sleazy of him to tell the kid that the sight of women breast-feeding made him hard—especially since at the time, Katniss had been in the room doing exactly that—so he just gave an assenting chuckle and changed the subject lest he seemed like an old lecher.

That afternoon, Peeta and Haymitch were at the Mellark-Everdeen residence, sitting on the porch and drinking their post-work beers, impervious to the anger this innocent shared pastime would very soon ignite in their significant others. Speaking of which: While Effie climbed higher and higher up Anxiety's Peak, Katniss was beginning a whole different kind of ascent: Up the career ladder, as an ambitious young cadet reporter for _The United Districts Herald._ At first, Katniss had been adamant that she receive no special treatment—her role in the rebellion should have no bearing on her current professional life, she said. And for the most part, her wish had been granted: the _United Districts_ staff treated her like just another caffeine-addled compatriot. Still, Katniss couldn't deny that she often got to run stories that were far more shocking or controversial than what would typically be allocated to a cadet. And of course, there were always going to be interviewees who were star-struck by the fact that the person interviewing them had been (gasp!) _the Mockingjay_—but she supposed she was just going to have to get used to that. When Peeta mentioned Katniss's complaints to Haymitch after the latter enquired about how she was going, Haymitch was less than sympathetic: "Yeah," he sneered. "Right. Poor thing has to 'get used to' people deferring to her and kissing her ass all the time. Boo fucking hoo!"

"It's tough on her," Peeta said defensively, feeling the need to fight in his wife's corner in her absence. "People have all these wildly-unrealistic preconceived ideas about who she is or what she's capable of. They forget she's as human as they are."

Haymitch gave a sour laugh. "Come the fuck on, kid. High expectations ain't a fucking _burden._ They mean people care about you."

"They _can_ be a burden, and they _don't_ necessarily mean people care," Peeta countered, his voice rising with his growing fury. "And what are you on about, anyway? Are you trying to say no-one cares about you?"

Haymitch grinned sardonically and shook his head as he took a swig of booze. "My parents were a couple of Morphling addicts, Peet. Off their fucking eyeballs, all the fucking time. But my folks _did_ care about me, oh yeah. They had to—I was the shit-head who purchased their fucking morphling. I couldn't get prosecuted 'cuz I was a juvie, so they sent me off on little drug-buying expeditions. As far as those dickheads were concerned? My life had value because I was their fucking drug mule, and that was it." Another large sip from the bottle. Haymitch's eyes had a distant look in them. He shook his head and laughed.

"I _wish_ someone hadda had 'high expectations' of me."

Peeta felt a pang for Haymitch then. He'd heard this story before—Haymitch often trotted it out when he was off-his-head drunk, which made Peeta suspect that Haymitch had secretly engaged in some on-site drinking before coming to visit him this afternoon (a lone bottle of booze didn't make you _that_ sozzled). Tales of childhood abuse constituted a rare subgenre of true-life horror; stories whose emotional impact couldn't be diminished by repetition. Peeta would never cease to feel sorry for Haymitch whenever the old bloke talked about his childhood. Even without being reaped for the Quarter Quell as a sixteen-year-old, Haymitch's life had been heartbreakingly sad. Most of us have a quota of horrors that life uses to test the durability of our spirits; Haymitch's number seemed limitless.

And yet: it is also undeniably true that circumstances that entrap a person in their childhood can become a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card for poor behaviour in their adult life. It was perhaps this knowledge, not lack of sympathy stemming from weariness with an over-familiar tale, that caused Peeta to reply, "I'm sorry you had to go through that, Haym. Your brother was fucked-up, and none of it was your fault. Still, I guess we all have our crosses to bear."

"Some more than others."

"She lost her _sister,_ Haym."

Haymitch scowled. Peeta knew his last remark was hardly a trump card; yes, Katniss had suffered the tragedy of her sister's death at the hands of Coin. But the Capitol's bloody hands had snatched away the lives of Haymitch's two sisters _and_ both his brothers. And yes, Katniss's father had been killed in the mines. But Haymitch had lost _his_ father to a Morphling overdose. And yes, it was true that Katniss's Mum wasn't quite right in the head following the death of her father. But neither of Haymitch's parents had had any brains to begin with. Peeta felt uneasy comparing the deaths in this way, as if life's horrors were a scoresheet and one person's suffering conferred a sense of superiority over those who allegedly had it 'easier.' If there was one remnant of stale ideology that persisted from the old 'Hunger Games' world, from the pre-Mockingjay Rebellion period—one that Peeta would very much like to see go away and never, ever come back—it was the idea that some peoples' lives mattered more than others.

To his credit, Haymitch didn't try to compete for the honour of Most Fucked-Up Childhood. "Yeah," he said gruffly. "Forgot about that. And her old man too, right? In the mines. Sorry about that."

"No worries." Peeta gave a sad smile and raised his beer bottle. "A toast," he proclaimed bittersweetly, "to the innate fucked-upness of mankind."

"Cheers." They both exchanged wry smiles and clinked their bottles together.

At that moment, Maia, the Everlark's perpetually-upbeat, twenty-something Latina maid, skipped merrily out the front door and onto the porch. "Ciao now, Boss Man!" she chirped brightly, giving Peeta a friendly wave. (Calling Peeta 'Boss Man' was part of her playful teasing. Peeta had insisted that Maia call him by his first name to introduce a sense of egalitarianism to their relationship; but Maia, smart girl that she was, knew that this informality was really about alleviating his liberal guilt over having hired a maid in the first place— especially one of colour). The teasing had no dark undercurrent, though. For Maia, the ways of politically-correct white folk were not a cause for hostility or resentment; merely bemusement. And some merciless ribbing. In fact, she loved looking after Peeta and Katniss's kids while the former broke bricks and the latter broke news. Maia had a fiercely protective maternal streak and felt like a Mama Bear with her cubs around the Everlark kids, who were as snug a fit for their surrogate mother as a pair of comfy old woollen socks.

"Thanks for all your work again, Maia. You're a gem." Peeta smiled warmly at her for a moment and then frowned suddenly, as if remembering something. "Now, did you remember that Theo needs to sleep—"

"On his back, in his crib, with no stuffed toys or anything surrounding him. Yes, Boss Man—I always remember that."

"And Athena? What's she doing? Has she eaten yet?" Athena was the couple's four-year-old daughter.

"Yes, Miss Athena Primrose had a nice TV dinner: Meat and three veg, in fun-size." Maia laughed. "She's in the lounge watching cartoons now."

Peeta gave her a grateful smile. "Ta for that, Maia. Katniss and I don't know where we'd be without you."

An impish smile. "Up Shit Creek oarless at high tide is where you'd be, Boss Man! Ha ha. Okay, see ya tomorrow!" She gave a final little wave before disappearing up the garden path in the direction of her car. Peeta and Haymitch's eyes followed the curvy young woman's receding form.

"I'd hit that." Haymitch took a large gulp, finishing the bottle and reaching in his backpack for another.

"You mean, if you weren't with Effie."

"Yeah. That's _exactly_ what I mean." Haymitch chuckled and gave the back of Peeta's head a playful slap. "Listen to yourself, man—you are so fucking whipped!"

Peeta gave a good-natured laugh. "Whatever, Haym. Look, we'd better head inside. Athena usually plays pretty well by herself, but I can't leave her in the house unsupervised."

Haymitch gave a grunt of assent, and the two men headed indoors to see what Peeta's daughter was up to.

In the living-room, little Athena sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the T.V. set, her wide blue eyes hypnotised by its anaesthetising glow. The arrival of her father and his friend seemed to break the spell, and the young miss blinked rapidly before promptly springing to her feet.

"Unca Haymick!" she cried, smiling and wrapping her chubby arms around his thighs in a tight hug. Haymitch smiled groggily down at her. He didn't really like kids, but he'd developed a fondness for Athena one day when the two of them had built a Lego fortress together. She'd been leaning over to retrieve a Lego bumble-bee (stripy and hidden, like Waldo, in the sea of coloured Lego bricks she was sitting among on the floor), when all of sudden, the little girl accidentally let out a small fart. With the blushing self-awareness that children acquire at a certain age, Athena quickly got to her feet, murmured, "I have to go to the bathroom," and then marched hastily off in the direction of the hall. But when she reached the entrance to the hallway, she hesitated and swung around. "It's rude to fart in front of people," she informed Haymitch tartly, before turning around and resuming her march to the bathroom. Haymitch had shaken his head, laughing. She had been so prim and officious; those blonde curls haughtily bouncing as she instructed him in the proper ways of adult etiquette. Probably what Effie had been like as a little girl.

"Hey, yeah. Unca Haymick is here. How exciting." Haymitch threw his head back and downed some more liquor. The thought of Effie put him in a bad mood.

"So, how's Effie been lately?" Peeta asked, as if reading his thoughts. Haymitch ruffled Athena's curls; the young girl flashed him an adorable smile before skipping off to her room, and the two men took a seat on the couch.

Peeta instantly regretted his question the minute he'd asked it. The scowl on Haymitch's face reminded him why they usually avoided discussing their partners.

Haymitch gave a hollow laugh. "Man, that is...I don't even know what to tell you." He shook his head, chugged some more booze. "Effie's a fucking bitch, and I'm the useless prick she blames everything on. We are fucked four ways from Sunday, my friend!"

"Oh...uh, I'm sorry—"

"You're sorry? _You're_ sorry?" Haymitch's voice wavered with the booze, taking on a dangerous edge. "No, kid. _I'm_ the one who's sorry. Sorry I have to live with a fucking _banshee_ who's always hassling me to give up the booze. 'Booze don't judge me, Eff!', I say. 'Beer doesn't nag nag fucking _nag,_ all the live-long day!' I mean, _fuck._ You know she nags me so much I can't even get it up anymore? She's like a mother, not a lover. Who pops wood over their fucking _mother?"_ Haymitch banged the empty beer bottle down on the small table in front of the couch and reached in his backpack for another.

Peeta grabbed Haymitch's arm. "Okay, I think you've had enough—"

Haymitch shook his arm free and defiantly twisted open the third bottle. "Yeah," he muttered darkly. "Had enough. I've had enough of that uptight bitch trying to change me. She's trying to turn me into a pussy, Peet! Fuck that! I ain't a prince charming."

_No shit,_ Peeta thought wryly.

Just then the front door opened, and into the living-room strode the lady of the house, grinning broadly from ear to ear. _"Hon-ey, I'm home!"_she said in a cheery singsong voice, setting her briefcase down on one of the armchairs. When she saw Haymitch, her smile immediately vanished. Her eyes narrowed. "What is _he_ doing here?"

"Nice to see you too, Sweetheart," Haymitch slurred, lunging drunkenly towards Katniss and trying to plant a sloppy kiss on one of her cheeks. She gave him a disgusted push, and Haymitch tumbled backwards onto the couch, laughing.

Katniss glared at Peeta and folded her arms. "Why is he here?"

Peeta climbed shakily to his feet. "We were sharing a few beers together after work. I think Haymitch, um...overdid it, somewhat." He shifted his weight uncomfortably like an abashed child.

Katniss gestured at the laughing drunk on the lounge. "Yeah, no kidding. How many beers did he have, Peeta?"

"How many...?" Peeta frowned in concentration, as if trying to solve a complicated Maths problem. "Um...three?"

Katniss shook her head firmly. "No _way_ would he be that drunk after only three beers." She picked up one of Haymitch's empty bottles from the table and raised it to her nose. Her eyes widened.

"Jesus Peeta, this isn't beer! It's _tequila!"_

"Tequila?" _Damn, I'm really going to be in for it now,_ Peeta thought unhappily. "But he's got it in beer bottles!" A piss-weak protest, even by his standards.

Katniss gave a disbelieving laugh. "Just 'cause it's in beer bottles doesn't mean it's _beer,_ honey."

Peeta was desperate. "Well, you can't know until you've tried it, can you?"

Katniss gave him an incredulous look. "Are you fucking serious? My tits are full of _milk,_ you half-wit! You want our son's brain to be pickled? You try it."

"Katniss! Don't swear, will you? The kids could hear." Though right now, he supposed, profanity was the least of their worries.

Katniss folded her arms and glared hotly at her husband. Peeta sighed. Raising the third bottle to his lips, he did as she requested, taking a small sip.

"Well?"

The look in his eyes said it all. The liquid was definitely not beer.

"Shit." Katniss closed her eyes and massaged her temples with her fingertips, murmuring calming incantations to herself under her breath. When she opened her eyes, she was in control and business-like.

"Okay, look. I'm not going to tear you a new asshole over this..._yet._ The important thing is that you get that—" she gestured with unconcealed loathing at the drunk on the couch—"away from our children and home to Effie. Now."

"But, Katniss—"

_"Now,_ Peeta."

Peeta sighed. "Okay. C'mon, Haym. Let's get you outta here, eh?" As they made their way to the door, Peeta had to periodically grab hold of Haymitch to keep him from falling over.

"Please, kid," Haymitch begged. "Don't take me home to that bitch. I'm gonna be in such deep shit later."

_You and me both,_ Peeta thought glumly.


	3. Chapter 3

Effie and Haymitch each had something they wanted to reveal to the other. Haymitch's revelation, treading tequila in his booze-soaked brain, struggled to stay afloat as competing delusions pushed it further and further below the surface, jostling for their own right to oxygen. Likewise, Effie's revelation—a previously-concealed wild streak whose exposure was supposed to jump-start Haymitch's narcoleptic libido—had been sadly crushed like the wing of a small bird in the hands of a careless child. All things considered, the circumstances in which Effie and Haymitch found themselves on the evening of what was meant to be their fifth anniversary were not conducive to any kind of grandiose revelations whatsoever; merely to tears and shouted recriminations. In fact, given the situation, and the pair's twin liabilities (booze for him, regret for her), it didn't seem as though either Effie or Haymitch's confession would ever escape from the couple's slack, goofily agape mouth (his) or pursed, disapproving lips (hers). Which probably would've been for the best. After all, nothing _good_ could come of bitterness marinated in tequila, of hope liberally basted slick with disappointment. It was a sure-fire recipe for disaster.

Unfortunately, when it came to the preparation of _that_ particular dish, the combined talents of Haymitch Abernathy and Effie Trinket were second to none.

Haymitch swaggered crookedly in through the front door, swinging from one piece of furniture to the next like Tarzan in a bid to steady himself as he made his way to the kitchen, searching for something to soak up the booze. Peeta tagged along behind him at a safe distance. He had wanted to help Haymitch up the driveway and into the house, lest the stubborn old bastard fall and wind up with a concussion, but Haymitch had snarled that Peeta wasn't his fucking carer and should quit being such a pussy. So Peeta merely contented himself with playing guardian angel, an unseen yet vigilant presence who kept dangerous objects (shards of glass, garden rakes) from injuring Haymitch until his friend was safely and soundly inside.

Although the old man had been indifferent to its presence, Peeta had been sad to note that Effie's car was parked in the couple's driveway. He had hoped she'd be working late, or even in bed already (it was only 9 o'clock, but some people liked to retire early. Katniss certainly seemed eager to get some shut-eye well before her usual bedtime these days, ever since the demands of motherhood had begun to take their toll). The fact that Effie would have to see Haymitch in his current pissed-as-a-newt state depressed Peeta, and brought about what was always (for the ever-moral Mellark) an inevitable sense of guilt. _If only I'd stopped him from having that last drink..._

"He's a _grown man,_ Peeta," Katniss always said irritably whenever Peeta bemoaned his inability to keep his wayward friend on the straight and narrow. "He can take care of himself! Honey, look: you gotta stop feeling as though you're responsible for that man." And yet, who had been the one to demand that he take "that man" home to his lady? (Of course, Peeta would've driven Haymitch home anyway; there was no way he'd let the old guy get behind the wheel that plastered). As for the 'adult' thing, well—it was debateable as to whether Haymitch Abernathy had ever become an adult at all. Certainly, he knew how to look out for himself. But he didn't really _take care_ of himself, and those were two quite different things. Who would care for Haymitch if the 'ol coot refused to care for himself? Well, he had Effie. Sweet, kind Effie, whose capacity for tolerant understanding seemed to Peeta to be limitless, a precious resource wasted on a drunken git who always took it for granted. Effie would take care of him, at least some of the time. But there were times when Effie wasn't there, when Haymitch was out with the boys or on the building site or wherever, and he needed a buddy to look out for him. He also needed another man to level with him: Tell him he'd lose the most wonderful woman he'd ever met if he didn't give the booze a bit of a rest, tell him to wizen up and pull his fuckin' head in.

Peeta wasn't that sort of friend. Oh, sure, he'd always look out for the guy, always be there to ensure Haymitch didn't get arrested on charges of sexual harassment or indecent public exposure. But when it came to tough love, well, Peeta was not the ideal candidate for that particular position. Oh, he could be a firm father and a dependable husband, but Peeta Mellark was a painter and a dreamer at heart, not a brutal-truth-telling, emotional mercenary. His love was the gentler kind.

And yet: even in the absence of a more stern taskmaster, Abernathy was about to receive quite a wrap across the knuckles.

Haymitch had simply planned to pass through the dining room en route to the kitchen. He hadn't anticipated seeing the carefully-curated, stone-cold Italian meal, laid out on the chequered tablecloth as perfectly and beautifully as if it were a photograph from a brochure advertising the finest in European cuisine. Nor did he expect to see the lilac petals, which seemed to shrivel and wither their disapproval of his tardy arrival. And he certainly did not expect to see Effie, seated at the table dressed in a figure-hugging red strapless number, her large liquid eyes complimenting the shade of her frock perfectly. She stood up when she saw him in the doorway.

"Hello Haymitch," she said stiffly, in far too formal a tone. Peeta felt a pang in his heart at her voice; he knew Effie only employed that kind of rigid, detached tone in moments when she was deeply, deeply hurt. He also knew that this quirk of Effie's was far too subtle for Haymitch to ever pay it much heed. He was half-right. Effie's habit of using aloof detachment to mask her deeper feelings hadn't entirely escaped Haymitch's notice—in the five years they'd been romantically involved and in the seventeen they'd worked alongside one another in The Old World, Haymitch _had_ developed a vague awareness of, and even a kind of sensitivity to, Effie's moods and the manner in which she expressed them. It wasn't accomplished through her nagging or her attempts to improve him, despite the tendency of previously-roguish men who'd noticed a change in their personalities to attribute this change to perpetual hen-pecking by their female partners. Rather, it was the personality's natural acclimatisation to a partner's emotional habitat through constant exposure: Haymitch knew that Effie was approaching her period when she became extra snappish with him over trivial misdemeanours, or when he caught her surreptitiously eating squares of rich, dark chocolate in the bathroom. He knew she wanted sex when she sidled up to him with a saucy smile and purred that she'd love a backrub. And he knew he'd fucked up when she stared at him with red, wet eyes that glared accusingly at him as if to say, _'See this? See how miserable I am right now? YOU did this to me, you heartless bastard.'_ Haymitch noticed all of this. In fact, most people would be surprised to learn how much Haymitch 'Asshole' Abernathy noticed about his beleaguered Effie. However, on this occasion, Haymitch was true to moniker: Both the frosty manner of Effie's reception and her sad eyes failed to register an impression.

Haymitch walked through the entrance to the dining room and planted himself a few feet in front of Effie, a fool singing in the rain oblivious to the impending stormclouds. He grinned lopsidedly, made a wide sweeping gesture with his arm to indicate the scene Effie had spent hours preparing. "So! Special occasion then, eh?"

"It _was,"_ Effie muttered darkly. Her arms were crossed and her narrowed eyes bored into Haymitch's. Even from the relative safety of the doorway, Peeta shuddered. He thought that he would not like to be in Haymitch's shoes right now.

"So, you gonna keep me in suspense, Sweetheart?" Haymitch chuckled. He picked up the bottle on the table and inspected it. He gave a low whistle. "Ooh, champers. Fancy stuff. What we celebrating?"

_"Guess."_ Snarled rather spoken.

Haymitch pretended to give it some thought. "Let's see, I know it ain't _President's_ Day…and the Mockingjay Liberation holiday was _last_ week…" Haymitch grinned and shook his head, shrugging his shoulders. "Give up. No fucking clue."

"Our fifth anniversary." Her eyebrows converged in an angry scowl.

"Oh." Haymitch's face fell. Then, with a forced grin that more closely resembled a grimace, he tried to make the best of a bad situation. He held up the bottle of wine. "Well, it's still early, ain't it? We can still celebrate."

"The food is cold." The food wasn't the only thing.

"Yeah, but the ambience is still hot hot hot, right?" he chuckled. His face fell at the exact moment he realised his joke had, and Haymitch averted his eyes and scratched the back of his head uncomfortably.

Effie gave a pained laugh. "You just don't get it, do you?" She sat down at one of the chairs again, hunched forward with her elbows on her knees and her bowed head in her hands, looking ready to explode. She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger as if to deactivate herself.

Haymitch reached out a consoling hand to stroke the back of her head. "Effie—"

_"Don't touch me."_ Her head jerked up and the corners of her mouth twitched into a sour smile. "You don't have any appreciation for what I do for you, do you, Haymitch? None whatsoever." She gave another hollow laugh and shook her head, trying so hard to stop her lower lip from trembling, her face from creasing. She straightened up, gestured at the cold meal. "I spent _so much time_ trying to make this evening special for us, Haymitch, and you just…you just piss it up the bloody wall, every. Single. Fucking. _Time."_ She swallowed hard, lowered her eyes.

"Effie, I'm sorry. I didn't realise—"

"But that's the problem, isn't it? You _never_ realise. You never take a moment's pause to stand back from yourself and think about how your selfish actions affect others. I feel like I'm in this relationship alone. You're never here for me, Haymitch—physically, emotionally, sexually. You're always somewhere else, indulging your every whim like a spoilt child."

"Yeah?" Haymitch's temper had started to flare. "Well, maybe I wouldn't behave like a child if you'd stop fucking treating me like one." He slammed the bottle back down on the table.

Effie sprung to her feet and jabbed a furious finger into Haymitch's barrel of a chest. "And what, pray tell, is _that _supposed to mean?"

"It means, _Sweetheart,_ that you're a patronising bitch who always tries to make me into something I'm fucking not. You nag me so fucking much, I find it hard to view you sexually anymore, Eff. I see you as a mother, not a lover. Christ, it's no wonder I haven't been able to get a fucking hard-on lately."

This was more information than Peeta needed to know.

Effie looked at Haymitch as astounded as if he'd struck her. "You…you really think about me that way? As a mother?" The hard edge in her voice had gone. She appeared shocked, and deeply wounded.

"Well…" Haymitch instantly regretted his words. He averted his gaze from hers, shifted his weight uncomfortably. "Not _all_ the time…but mostly, well…_yeah."_

In this moment, had Effie chosen to tell Haymitch that she was glad he told her this even though it hurt her, and that they both needed to work on a solution together, he would've responded in kind, with remorse for his actions—and the couple might've still been able to salvage a part, no matter how small, of their evening. Unfortunately, Effie had switched gears from wounded uncertainty to righteous indignation, and the latter had a notorious reputation for adding fuel to emotional fires.

"Well," she gave a nasty laugh. "I'll have you know you're not the only one who finds the dynamics of this relationship a little incestuous." She made a slow sweeping gesture with her arm, starting at his head and ending at his feet. "Just look at yourself, Haymitch: Always in the same dirty, unwashed clothes every day, always whining at me"—she adopted a simpering, childish tone_—"'I can't help it, Eff, the bottle's the only thing that helps me cope, why do you have to be so hard on me?'_ Blah blah bloody blah. And _now_ look at you"—she gestured at the half-furious, half-contrite man before her—"cowering like a little baby. It's not so great having a little _boy_ for a lover either, you know. What's happened to you, Haymitch? You used to be a _man."_

Buoyed by both the tequila and the slight against his masculinity, Haymitch's revelation finally reached the surface.

"Well, it's hard to be a man when you've been made into a cuckold, ain't it?"

His words threw Effie completely off guard. "What?"

"Don't you fucking 'what?' me, Eff! I know what you've been up to in your office hours, when you're supposedly 'working.'"

"What on Earth are you talking about?"

"Oh, you _know_ what I'm talking about, you little slut."

"Haymitch! Don't you fucking _dare_ call me that ever again, do you understand? And no, I don't have the faintest _clue_ what you're talking about. What else would I be doing at work other than working?"

"Gee, I dunno. Maybe sucking Heavenbee's dick…"

Effie was truly stunned. "Did you…did you just accuse me of having an affair?"

"Hey, I don't see you denying it!"

Peeta thought Haymitch's accusation was completely baseless, and more than a little bit ludicrous. For a start, though she was his personal assistant, Effie spent most of her working hours away from Plutarch, liaising with officials in other government departments and doing so in settings with such high levels of surveillance, the very idea that there'd be any place for her to sneak off and get it on with someone was highly improbable. Secondly, it was Plutarch. Yes, the man was attractive—in that highly inauthentic, Capitol way—but he wasn't Effie's type at all. She liked 'em a little unkempt, a little rough around the edges. Which was exactly why her late husband had been built like a brick shithouse, why she'd fallen so hard for Haymitch in the first place. Androgynous men, though highly sought after by many, didn't really run to Effie's earthier, more conventional tastes. Honestly—Peeta wondered if Haymitch ever really understood his missus at all.

"I'm not denying it, Haymitch, because it's far too stupid an accusation to even bother with!"

"Oh, great. Now I'm stupid. Unlike your hero, Heavensbee. Do you think I'm fucking deaf, Effie? Do you think I don't hear the way you bang on about how wonderful he is?"

Effie's exasperated eyelids slowly fluttered closed and she raised her head to the ceiling.

"Please, Haymitch. I'm tired. Can we just drop this? Pretend as if this whole horrid evening never happened? I'd really like to go to bed."

"Oh, no. No fucking way, Effie! _I_ always have to listen to _you_ rant on and on and fucking on whenever _you're_ pissy. So harden up, princess. Now it's your turn."

"Well, go on right ahead then!" Effie shouted. "Bring up whatever the hell you need to so I can go to fucking bed, you bloody lunatic of a man!"

"Oh, I will bring it up! I'll…I'll…" Suddenly, a wave of nausea swept over him and Haymitch felt himself begin to get a little bit queasy. He gripped the side of one of the chairs in order to steady himself. He swayed slightly.

"Well, come on! Bring it the hell up already!"

Haymitch opened his mouth and vomited copiously all over the table.

The entire table's contents—the twin bowls of spaghetti, the bottom of the now-unlit candelabra, the flowers—were now afloat in a thick river of alcohol, chicken and mayonnaise bile. Some of it splashed onto the tips of Effie's pointy stilettos. On the table, chunks of vomit tried to disguise themselves as petals.

Haymitch only had a few seconds to take in the look of frozen horror on Effie's face before the white tablets Katniss had forced him to take—sedatives, apparently—knocked him out cold. He collapsed into a heap on the floor, unconscious and face-down in his own bile.

Effie stood there as woodenly as a statue, her lower lip quivering as she surveyed the grotesquery that surrounded her: the beautiful meal, now covered in slimy vomit. The formerly-fragrant air, now foul with the stench of stomach acids. Her once-handsome, wonderful Haymitch, now a pathetic pisshead lying face-down in his own spew on the evening of their fifth anniversary.

Effie gave Haymitch a kick and rolled him over onto his back, so he didn't drown in his own filth. His face was slick with foul effluvia, sticky chunks of the stuff clinging to his eyelashes and his beard and the tufts of his hair. Suddenly, it was all too much for Effie, and she slammed a furious stiletto heel right onto his nose. It made sickening crack, and twin waterfalls of blood flowed from each nostril. A loud sob escaped her lips, and her shoulders began to shake.

"He deserved that, you know."

Effie slowly turned around. Peeta was standing in the doorway, giving her a sad, bittersweet smile.

"Come on, then," he said gently. "I'll help you clean up."


	4. Chapter 4

The shower head was old and mildewed to the point of spawning its own civilisation. Black and green flecks of mould blanketed the ceiling and had begun their slow creep down the side of the walls, an entropic canopy. Effie had been meaning to get the bathroom re-modelled for ages, but she was too short on funds. It didn't help that Haymitch treated their finances like cheap confetti, throwing huge handfuls of the stuff at whatever struck his fancy: booze, new set of wheels, more booze, gambling. Probably strippers too, god help her. Effie _knew_ that getting a joint bank account had been a bad idea.

Haymitch was lying where Peeta had put him—passed out cold in the couple's bathtub, his ragdoll arms hanging limply over the sides while the fawcett dug into the back of his neck. The shower on the wall above him drenched his clothes, washing away the vomit with its reproachfully icy downpour.

Standing stiffly in the bathroom doorway, her hands balled into tight fists at her sides, Effie regarded her comatose Other with unconcealed disgust. _Foul man,_ she thought furiously, her contempt slowly ebbing away to the more familiar bitter resignation. _Here we go again. Always I forgive you, Haymitch, and always you take my forgiveness and spit it right back in my face...or on my shoes, thank you ever so much for THAT. Why do I still love you? Why do I still want more than anything else in the world for you to drop down on one knee and propose marriage to me—even after this fucking catastrophe of an evening, even after all the shit you put me through over the entire course of our relationship? Honestly, I swear to Zeus, I must be the biggest masochist alive._

Peeta knelt beside the bathtub, tending to Haymitch's nose with some ointment and gauze. He frowned in concentration as he inspected the damage.

"It might be broken—at least, it certainly _sounded_ as though it was broken—but don't worry. It doesn't seem like a _bad_ break, and anyway, broken noses are a snap to fix these days, pardon the awful pun. We'll take him down to the hospital in the morning after he's sobered up a bit, eh?" Peeta shot her a reassuring smile.

"Thank you for this, Peeta," Effie said in a voice of quiet sincerity. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

"You'd manage." His smile was becoming uncertain around the edges. Wary. Effie immediately grew self-conscious. Did she sound a little _too _grateful, her voice a little _too_ husky for what was meant as nothing more than a polite, perfunctory thank you? It certainly seemed that way, if she was reading Peeta correctly. Her cheeks pinkened to the shade of the Capitol couture wigs she used to wear.

Peeta stood up. "Maybe I should go," he said, trying to sound casual as he made his way to join Effie over in the entrance to the bathroom. He paused alongside her, seeming to search his mind for something to say and coming up short. Instead, the pair of them took a moment to silently observe Haymitch in the tub, the water beginning to collect in that cavernous mouth like a birdbath.

"Shit, I should probably go and roll him onto his side," Peeta muttered, chuckling awkwardly. "So he doesn't choke on the water. Or, you know, his own vomit."

_Oh, let him choke,_ Effie thought darkly, but she merely nodded and said mildly, "Yes, of course. Good idea, Peeta."

While Peeta re-positioned Haymitch, Effie took a moment to admire his arms. They were surprisingly solid for a baker's boy-cum-artiste, though Effie supposed that it was probably natural for the guy to bulk up a little after exchanging paintbrushes for bricks and mortar. His biceps were so solid, like he was carrying half a rock melon under each arm. _HAYMITCH used to have arms like that,_ Effie thought ruefully, _back when he was hitting the gym more frequently than the bottle._

_God-fucking-damn it._

When Peeta had finished rescuing Haymitch from choking on his own filth, Effie quickly averted her eyes, the rouge of embarrassment faintly dusting her cheeks. She fervently hoped her brief perve had gone unnoticed.

Peeta straightened up and gestured at the shower. "Want me to turn this off before I go?"

_Oblivious. Good. Thank Zeus for that._

Effie waved a dismissive hand. "No, it's fine. It's the bastard in the tub's turn to pay the water bill. And the dry-cleaning bill," she added sourly, shooting a dirty look over her shoulder at the tablecloth that laid in a messy heap in the corner of the bathroom, stained with the foulness of her partner's liquid laughter. Peeta managed an uncomfortable chuckle as she ushered him out into the hallway.

As Peeta walked in front of Effie up the hall that led to the lounge room, Effie couldn't help but recall all the times Haymitch had chased her up and down this hall, lunging forward clumsily and eagerly grabbing at her ass as desire blazed in his eyes, while Effie giggled uncontrollably as she sprinted in front of him in her heels, waiting for the exact moment when her pursuer's frustration and lust were at their peak to let herself get "caught."

What had _happened_ to them?

The memory seemed to be having a strange effect on Effie, because as she and Peeta were passing through the lounge en route to the front door, Effie heard herself pipe up, "Sure you wouldn't like to stay for a bit, Peeta? Maybe sit down in the lounge for a minute or two, have a nice cup of tea...?"

"Uh, I think I'll take a rain-check, but thank you for the offer. It's just getting a bit late now; gotta be getting home to Katniss and the kids, I suppose."

_"Please,_ Peeta."

Peeta turned to face her. He regarded her with an expression which Effie tried to register as kindness but which she knew was probably much closer to pity. She didn't mind. She was lonely. If he agreed to stay Peeta would be a temporary place-holder in the spot labelled 'Male Company', a void which these days Haymitch's physical presence did precious little to fill.

"You know," Peeta said thoughtfully, "on second thought, I could really use a cup of coffee for the trip home." A kindly smile.

There was a part of Effie—the logical part—that knew perfectly well that her giddy, schoolgirl excitement over Peeta's acceptance of her offer was pathetic. Then again, there was _another_ part of Effie—the primitive part, driven by hormones and emotions and a raw, aching hunger for the masculine attention from which she'd been starved for months on end—that simply didn't give a shit.

Effie got Peeta settled down on the armchair and then made a quick retreat to the kitchen next door, where she put the kettle on and chewed worriedly on her lower lip. While waiting for the water to boil, she pondered her next course of action—should she go back into the lounge and make small-talk with Peeta? Or should she simply remain in the kitchen, safe from human interaction and the inadvisable urging of her hormones? The latter option was tempting—in her youth, Effie's comfort zone had been an impenetrable fortress, the walls so thick with refusal that the structure held firm against even the most volatile of others' emotional storms, even the most potent of their seductions. Time had left it a little weather-beaten, left her a bit more open to other people—their puerile provocations, yes, but also their feelings, their ideas. Fantasies, desires...she'd probably done a few things that she would live to regret (especially sexually, especially with Haymitch), but in general, this new..._receptivity,_ she supposed she'd call it—was probably a positive force in her life. After all, wasn't it what had motivated her to get that damn Brazilian in the first place?

At this thought, Effie felt herself begin to grow sour again. _Yes, well. Since THAT worked out so terrifically._ She sighed heavily. _Such a waste._

In the end, Effie chose the former option, and in doing, removed yet another shingle from the roof of the structure.

She sat down on the couch and managed a tentative grin at Peeta, who regarded her from the armchair opposite with a smile that was polite and friendly, nothing more. Effie supposed she'd better say something before things got awkward. Any kind of superficial chit-chat would do.

_So, how's Athena finding preschool? Little Theo, has he moved on to solids yet? Katniss's career is really taking off, isn't it? Reporter Of The Year, gosh—what a splendid achievement! You must be so proud of her._

Fuck it. She couldn't do it.

A loud sob clawed its way up her throat. Effie didn't resist its escape. The expression of poised friendliness cracked, and a mortifying flood of emotion poured out as Effie leaned forward and buried her head in her hands, clasping her creased face like she was trying to stop it from falling apart.

She didn't know when it happened, but at some point, Peeta materialised next to her on the couch, holding out a fat wad of tissues and making comforting noises that were barely audible above Effie's loud, irrepressible sobs. How bloody humiliating! She hadn't intended to fall to pieces like this. Effie usually resented people who lacked the ability to control their emotions. Self-control was her god; tears were the most obscene kind of blasphemy. Red eyes, snotty nose, running mascara—it was all so fucking clichéd. She hated herself. She really, truly did.

"He doesn't deserve you, you know." A masculine hand now rested gently on one shoulder.

Effie's sobs began to die down. The comforting noises had become words. Kind ones. And what's more...

That _hand._

Maybe it was because Haymitch hadn't touched her in god knew how long, but Peeta's fingertips on Effie's bare shoulder suddenly made her entire body come to life. It just felt _so good,_ the touch of another person—humans were tactile creatures, craving to touch and be touched, and right now, Effie felt her long-neglected animal side could use some attention.

She straightened up, her eyes locked firmly with Peeta's. She was a little shocked, honestly. She thought Peeta would view her as a dirty old woman—she _was_ nearly fifty, after all. But unlike Haymitch, Effie knew how to read others' body language. The Baker's boy wanted it as badly as she did.

Eyes still trained squarely on his, Effie seized Peeta's wrist and removed his hand from her shoulder, placing it firmly down on her thigh. Then, slowly parting her legs, she guided it higher up toward the bare smoothness, and at long last, was able to reveal her surprise.


	5. Chapter 5

**Part Two**

_It's been so long. So very, very long. I need this. I need this. I NEED this._

Effie stared hard into Peeta's eyes as she glided his hand higher, scooching her ass across the couch and angling her body toward him to bridge the space between them. Then, parting her thighs wider still, she traced the index finger of his hand lightly over the outline of her labia, starting at the bottom and gradually moving upwards. He hadn't even touched any of her primary erogenous zones yet, and already she could feel the heat beginning to build in her lower extremities. She felt it in her lower back, her thighs, her ass, her cunt—a localised fire that had raged out of control until it engulfed her completely, until her entire body was burning.

In the early days of her relationship with Haymitch, being slowly finger-fucked was a wicked treat, and easily her favourite of their shared pastimes. Haymitch would sit behind her, on the couch or in bed or in some appropriately-sleazy place they weren't meant to be, and whisper filthy things in her ear while stroking a thick, masculine finger in a come-hither gesture against the underside of Effie's white cotton panties. The wetness of the fabric against his hand, as well as the innocent choice of underwear, created a surprisingly erotic contrast that seemed to stoke Haymitch's imagination. "Someone's been a naughty girl," he'd murmur against her neck, an insistent finger pushing firmly into the rapidly dampening cotton. "I can tell your cunt likes this, Ms. T...know how?"—his voice would drop to a whisper—"Your panties. Are. _Soaked._ Look at you, moaning and thrashing about on the end of my finger." A sly smile. "Let's see if my cock has the same effect..."

A soft, low moan escaped Effie's lips. It was a moan of memory, the memory of an old pornographic rendezvous superimposed onto the present moment. It should've been a buzz-kill, a devastating déjà vu that suddenly dropped a ton of ethical quandaries into Effie's awareness like an air raid on a formerly oblivious civilian: How could she share something so intimate with someone else, someone who, like her, had no doubt signed his own erotic contract with a Significant Other which expressly forbid any third party interference? How could she do this to Haymitch—_her _Haymitch, who, though a drunkard and a dope and a great big insensitive lout, could also be warm and funny and refreshingly non-judgemental, as well as being an excellent human blanket to wrap herself in on cold evenings...how could she?

In other less emotional, less hormone-driven circumstances, Effie's firm sense of morality and innate Capitol dignity may've exploded these ethical considerations into her currently vague, dreamy awareness. However, tonight with Peeta had a different tone to it, an emotional urgency whose depth and intensity were like the early days with Haymitch in more ways than one. When Haymitch and Effie's relationship was in its infancy, Effie would often see the face of her first husband—now deceased—in Haymitch's own pleasure-contorted countenance when they made love. As Haymitch moaned and thrusted above her, growling roguishly and biting her neck as he came, Effie would see sparks of her former flame in her current lover's passionate fire. It was perfectly innocent, not something she ever felt guilty about, because her love for one man didn't in the slightest diminish her love for the other. She wasn't being unfaithful to Haymitch by vicariously fucking a ghost; nor was she betraying her dear husband's memory by sharing this very earthly pleasure with someone still in possession of a corporeal self. To Effie, the two men who'd touched her life at the deepest level were like Siamese twins eternally tethered by her love's umbilicus.

This moment was like so many before it. Flashing from one man to another. Haymitch's face, Peeta's hand. Peeta's finger, Haymitch's cock. Haymitch's eyes, Vulcan's ass. Vulcan's smile, Peeta's horrified, open mouth...

_What...?_

Startled from his trance, his eyes now wide with alarm as he seemed to realise what she was doing, Peeta rapidly drew his hand back as though he'd burned it on a hot stove. Looking at her with a mix of fear and pity and probably also distaste, he muttered diffidently, "I've got to go," then got up, threw on his coat and moved at a brisk clip toward the hall. Effie trailed after him, nearly tripping forward and head-butting a wall as her stocking-shod feet skidded across the uncarpeted linoleum.

"Peeta, wait!" Effie's strangled cry fell on deaf ears as the front door slammed reprovingly. She stood there in the hall, her face frozen in an expression of bewildered woundedness.

So he had gone home to Katniss and his children. Of course he had. How could she have ever thought he'd do otherwise? How could a middle-aged woman like herself—her face and body ravaged by gravity and what people euphemistically called "laughter lines" but what were really all the tears dammed up over a lifetime—think a young man whose skin was still pink and taut, whose face hadn't yet become a railroad track of misery, would ever be attracted to a withered, desiccated old sad-sack like her? What a delusional idiot she'd been.

And it was probably also fucking idiotic to think that a vulva wax, at her age, could kick-start Haymitch's hibernating libido, she thought unhappily. She glanced up at her reflection in the hall mirror. The image that stared back at her was not one of a kohl-eyed temptress, wantonly seducing men like a thirties siren of the screen. It was one of a sad old woman, whose tear-streaked mascara was now running down her face in twin rivers of tar.

Walking in a mummified stupor to her bedroom, once there Effie crouched down at the foot of her dresser, slid open the bottom drawer, and proceeded to partake in her favourite intimacy proxy.

It was a habit from childhood, her go-to comfort in times of distress or heartache or total, abject misery: Mars Bars. Twinkies. Bags of cotton candy. Whizz Poppers. Fantails. Pixie sticks and Reese's peanut butter cups, cookies n' cream anything. An assortment of high-cal snack treats that filled the void left by sex and love when those things were scarce. It was a furtive, secret shame, like breaking wind in public or getting off to a particularly unusual kink. Haymitch didn't know about it. She hoped he never would.

If we are unable to fill ourselves with one thing, another will take its place. And so, starved of erotic attention, Effie proceeded to gorge herself on something more readily available. Wild-eyed and drooling, she pushed bite-sized Mars Bars into her mouth one after the other, tore packets of M&M's savagely open with her teeth and tipped them down her throat. Polished off one maple glazed éclair after another in rapid succession. Finished one jumbo packet of chocolate chip cookies. Then another. Then another.

Soon, Effie's face, bloated and thick with a vile effluvia of chocolate and tears and snot, began to take on a sickly greenish tinge. She emitted a loud, long, liquid belch, whose complete disregard for lady-like etiquette would surely have made her old finishing school tutor turn over in her grave. She slumped beside the dresser with her legs outstretched in front of her, a limp, lifeless, flatulent ragdoll. Eventually, shaking uncontrollably, she managed to hoist herself to her feet and began the long death row march to the bathroom.

Haymitch was still passed out in the tub, anaesthetised by the insouciant indifference of sleep. Effie dropped to her knees in front of the porcelain confessional as the bile of her sins scorched her throat upon its departure. And she'd judged _Haymitch_ for getting drunk and throwing his guts up. _Karma's a cunt, eh?,_ Haymitch would often say. Still on her knees and vomiting violently into the toilet, Effie took a moment's reprieve from her retching to regard Haymitch with the first hint of affection she'd felt for him all evening. _Yeah, well, you got one thing right, Sweetheart,_ she thought wryly, as a long brown stream of regurgitated Snickers exploded into the toilet bowl. _Happy fucking anniversary._

**Author note: Don't worry; there's more chapters after this one. It doesn't end here!**


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